The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [91]
“Okay. I’ll be standing by.”
“Selar out.”
The Vulcan rose from her seat and gave Guinan a long look. “Thank you,” she said. “For helping me arrive at the only logical solution.”
Guinan smiled. “Where will you look?”
“Obviously, I will start with the park. If I cannot find her there, I will continue until I do find her.”
The hostess nodded. “Good luck.”
Thala crouched beneath the Altairian spider-silk cloak, huddled into a tiny space beneath the huge roots of a large flinan tree from Deneb Four. The flinan’s root structure left small, cavelike openings beneath them, something that most people did not know but Thev had once shown her during a shore leave visit. With the cloak shielding her thermal readings, she was virtually undetectable, except by the most sophisticated of sensing devices.
With a sigh, she wriggled a little, trying to get comfortable, and checked the chrono built into her sensory net. Only a little more than an hour had passed since she had slipped away from Geordi. She’d hated to do that; La Forge was her friend, and she had felt terrible hearing the worry in his voice as he’d called, searching for her. But her resolution had stayed firm, and she’d stayed hidden.
She wondered whether the people from the Enterprise would bother to look for her. They might; she’d have to be prepared to move in case they did. Summoning to mind the layout of the starbase, she pinpointed her closest alternative hiding place, in a storage room of a nearby computer center.
How long would the Enterprise stay docked? How long before she’d be able to move about freely, visit the jewelry stores to see which one would give her the best price? She’d been afraid to ask Wesley how long they were supposed to remain at Starbase 127. She hadn’t wanted to seem too curious.
Suddenly her blood seemed to congeal in her veins. A familiar voice was calling her name. “Thala! Thala! Thala, where are you?”
Selar. The child clamped her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear the Vulcan doctor’s voice. She had to get away, she just had to! She couldn’t let herself be swayed from her purpose. If she gave in, Thala knew, she’d end up on one of the colony worlds as a useless burden or a breeding slave in a hive harem. That wasn’t going to happen to her!
Cautiously, she took her fingers out of her ears, listening. “Thala!” Selar was shouting, louder and closer than ever. “Thala, this park is only a tenth of a kilometer wide, so I know that, with your Andorian hearing, you can hear me! Listen well, and know that I am telling the truth. I swear it on my honor as a Vulcan … you will not be sent back to any Andorian world.”
Thala’s mouth dropped open in wonder as she listened to her Vulcan friend shouting a personal message in a public park at the top of her lungs. Even if it was the middle of the “night” here, there was a good chance that she’d be overheard. And, at the moment, the normally imperturbable Selar sounded anything but calm and logical.
“Thala, I am asking you to come with me back to Vulcan. I wish for us to be together.” Selar cried. “Logically, it is the only thing to do.” She coughed, then resumed, her voice growing raspy, “Thala, can you hear me? Please come out! I am becoming distinctly hoarse from shouting.”
With a gasp, the child flung off the cloak and scrambled up out of her hiding place. Scarcely noticing the readings from her sensory net in her excitement, she darted around the trunk, toward the Vulcan officer’s voice. “Selar!” she shouted.
As she dashed forward, her toe caught on the end of the tree’s root, and she tripped and fell hard, twisting her ankle. The child hardly felt the pain. Her mind was racing. Is Selar telling the truth? she wondered incredulously. Vulcans don’t lie, so she must be!
“Selar!” she shouted, and scrambled up. “Selar?”
She heard running footsteps, perceived a fast-moving blur from her sensory net, then hands grabbed her shoulders, held her hard. “Thala!”
“Did you mean it?” the child gasped. “Did you mean it?